By Sarah Gillinson, Hannah Green and Paul Miller.The welfare system should be radically overhauled to support and empower disabled people to design and deliver their own services, according to a report published by the think-tank Demos. It calls on the Government to use reform of Incapacity Benefit to create a system of support for disabled people based on the principles of independent living, with the needs of the individual placed at the centre. The report was produced in partnership with Scope and is published as part of their Time To Get Equal campaign.

A special event is being staged in Leicester today as representatives from some of Europe’s leading companies visit the city to find out if they can help deliver its vision for education. Architects, financial institutions, ICT providers and building contractors will attend the ‘Building Schools for the Future Bidders’ Day’Leicester City Council is looking for a partner to work with it on the Government-backed scheme, which is a 236 million pound project to transform all the city’s secondary schools over the next eight years.

A new body has been set up to represent National Health Service chief executives, directors and managers. The unprecedented new trade union organisation is a joint venture by the FDA – the senior public servants’ union – and UNISON.The new organisation – Managers in Partnership (MiP), has been created after four years of preparation. It will represent NHS staff who are often wrongly derided as ‘bureaucrats’ or dismissed as ‘waste’. The new union will seek to support and provide an influential policy voice to managers who, its creators say, face relentless pressures such as re-defined or under-defined roles, targets and ever greater personal accountability.